Thunderland Chapter One
Alice drew her right arm back and clenched her hand making a fist. The giant pale blue and white battle armour in the centre of which she hung suspended in breathable shock jelly mimicked her movements exactly now and she felt a rush of exhilaration. She directed her thoughts at the pulsar cannons mounted around the robot’s right wrist and a solid bolt of energy erupted forward and slammed into the armoured metal waistcoat of her foe.
The sixty foot high white rabbit staggered backwards, arms flailing in the air. ‘Praying mantis stance number five’, Alice thought, picturing her battle armour moving into position. The armour complied, moving slightly to stand like a martial artist waiting to make her next move.
The rabbit, his mouth foaming, a snarl revealing his jagged teeth with long strands of saliva, recovered and lurched forward towards Alice, stamping down on the recently evacuated school building between them. A great long furry white paw ending in gnarled yellow claws smashing through its clock tower.
Alice moved from praying mantis, pivoting on the toes of her left foot while spinning her right foot round. The battle armour mirrored her, and the sole of its right foot whacked into the side of the rabbit’s head with a satisfying thunk. The rabbit was flipped right over spinning in the air to crash face first into the rubble of the school and neighbouring office block beneath him.
Building wreckage rained all around the prostrate rodent. Alice straightened up and looked around, the multiple cameras in the body of the armour provided her with a 360 ° display at all times, by turning her head she could see everything, as if she was the giant robot, rather than a tiny passenger encased in jelly at the centre of the abdomen.
She heard sirens approaching and followed the direction of the noise with her gaze. A fleet of police cars and other emergency vehicles were screaming down the high street towards the scene. Late as ever she thought.
A voice crackled over her headset.
‘Tinkerbell to Alice, come in Alice, Tinkerbell to…’
‘It’s okay I heard you Tinks.’
‘Time to get out of there I think comrade.’
‘No problem, I think I’ve got this.’
Alice focused on the idea of lifting vertically into the air, and without a moment’s pause the battle armour rose above the destruction of South Hackney.
In moments she was a thousand feet up, rapidly passing a couple of police and news helicopters that what buzzing around helplessly.
Alice called up the GPS and plotted a zigzag course to Neverland Base. ‘Don’t forget your radar shielding.’ Tinkerbell was ultra-paranoid about discovery, but Alice knew the score.
*****
The BBC reporter turned back from the scene of devastation behind her. Viewers would just be able to make out a giant comatose monster rabbit being dragged onto a huge flatbed truck behind her.
‘So that’s the latest from this battered community in central London today. The Metropolitan Police estimate is currently at 34 fatalities, over a thousand casualties being seen at local hospitals, and at least a billion pounds worth of damage. Local residents are demanding that the government steps in and puts a final stop to this sort of incident.’
Doctor Moreau clicked the x in the top corner of the window, shutting the clip off.
He sat back in the deep black leather chair and turned his back from the large, wood and glass office to look out of the picture window that filled the wall behind him. A cloud of neon fish burst and swam off before striking the glass. He stared into the deep blue, and then shook his head. He must not brood.
*****
Alice turned round lazily letting the jets of warm soapy water sluice off the last remaining clumps of green jelly off her body and out of her hair. They really needed to develop a combat suit that was actually skin tight. Jelly tight even. She stepped out of the shower, rubbing her long blonde hair vigorously with a towel when the Lion’s voice sounded directly behind her.
‘There’s a debrief in five minutes at the control room, you need to be there.’
Alice spun round and whipped the towel down from her hair and wrapped it awkwardly round her tall athletic frame. There was no one in the locker room. Damn those lobe implants.
‘I’ll be there of course,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
In the Neverland control room, a large spherical chamber at the centre of the space station, Tinkerbell was sitting at the centre of her control web, muttering away to someone on her headset.
The Lion was standing by the large monitor, dozens of windows scrolled across it, showing various scenes from the earlier battle, and from the various reports from news channels, and comment from bloggers, Twitter feeds, and Facebook posts. He was clad in a form fitting tailor made navy blue pinstripe Savile Row suit, of course all his clothes had to be handmade His 750 pound leonine form wasn’t really catered for by off the peg retailers.
He didn’t turn towards Alice before speaking, but instead swiped a window showing grainy police camera footage of a large hole until it became the main window.
‘This is where they’ve traced the rabbit back to, a large hole in an Oxfordshire field.’
‘Anyone been in yet?’
‘No, I’ve told them to hold back, secure the perimeter. We don’t know what else is down there.’
‘Okay. I want to go down.’ Alice folded her arms, preparing for an argument.
‘That’s what I had in mind. I’ve discussed it with the director and she agrees.’
That meant the director had told him, Alice thought, struggling to hid her grin.
‘The hole is big, but not big enough for the armour. You’re going to have to go in with back up.’
‘That’s fine, who’s available?’
‘You can have Tinman.’
‘Okay.’
‘He’s en route already, heading down from that shindig up in Scotland.’
‘Tinman ETA at the rabbit hole, twenty minutes.’ Tinkerbell said from her web.
‘Well then, better get going, there’s a drop capsule being readied for you in the departure bay. I’m going to com in on the first examination of the rabbit itself.’
Alice was already heading for the tube down to the departure bay, presumably the squires would have readied a scramsuit and combat gear for her as they were talking.
Forty minutes later Alice was standing at the edge of the rabbit hole in Oxfordshire as a chill drizzle spattered off her body armour and softened the freshly ploughed mud around them.
The armed police standing around in dripping ponchos clutching their Heckler and Koch MP5s to their chests looked miserable, not to mention resentful that it wasn’t them entering the hole.
Tinman clapped her playfully on the back, making her stagger forward slightly. He grinned at her. At about eight feet tall the steel plated robot man cut an imposing figure that was even without the bandoliers of ammunition and grenades strung diagonally across his chest and the matching M16s on his back.
‘Ready?’ He grated mechanically.
‘Yep, let’s go. Formation one five nine.’
They stepped over the mud and stones around the rim of the hole, Alice in front, Tinman behind, then after Alice had peered into the depths through her nightvision glasses they swapped and Tinman did the same.
‘Looks clear, proceed with caution.’
They moved off, regularly swapping places and pausing to look ahead. They carefully scanned the walls and floor, looking for booby-traps.
Alice could feel a sense of dull dread in the pit of her stomach.